


Roots

by acidpop25



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Female Friendship, Female Homosexuality, Female Protagonist, Founders fic, Language of Flowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acidpop25/pseuds/acidpop25
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Seer, a servant, and a love that has no need of words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roots

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta aveeno_baby for the look-over. This story makes several allusions to the language of flowers, so here’s a quick rundown of their meanings in the order they’re mentioned. Celandine: joys to come; grass: submission; pansy: think of me; forget-me-not: remember me; bluebell: constancy; jonquil: I desire a return of affection; honeysuckle: bonds of love, generous and devoted affection.

The Ravenclaw family was not the oldest or purest in wizarding society, but what was lacking in pedigree was more than made up for in power and wealth. While other nobility frittered away their fortunes piece by piece, the Ravenclaws built theirs in trade with distant lands. Born in their ancestral home in the north, Rowena loved the cool glens of her childhood, but she was never long in them. Home was much more of an idea than a place, and by the time she came into her magic she spoke the tongues of faraway lands, and her speech in any language carried a curious accent that belonged to nowhere. She was beautiful and strange, and there were whispers, always, about the ladies Ravenclaw, about how full of unreal ideas were their dark heads.

"No man will ever wed her," they would whisper, as though she did not hear. Rowena was glad of it; she was left to her solitude, to her studies, to her long hours reading late into the night by the glow of witchfire. There was no desire in her to be any man's belonging.

"We are moving south," Rowena's father told her when she was twelve years of age, and Rowena packed up her dresses and her books and made ready to depart once again. She was always going somewhere, always leaving somewhere; the lone constant of Rowena's life was flux.

The sun was filtering through the mists on the morning the Ravenclaws reached their new home, and Rowena settled into her chambers easily and calmly, arraying her possessions in the tidy and impersonal fashion of one who does not mean to stay, who never means to stay.

On the second day, she met the servants. Rowena had little interest in people– their maid seemed kind enough, a local farmer's wife with a soft voice and ruddy cheeks, but hardly worthy of much attention save in one matter: she had a daughter. The girl, introduced as Helga, looked to be near Rowena's age, and she had a round face about which flaxen hair curled, shiny and clean. Her eyes were very blue, bright and warm like the sky on a hot summer's day, not like the winter-ice of Rowena's own. She had the demure smile of a peasant girl, but with genuine delight.

Rowena knew her; Rowena had always known her. Rowena had Seen this girl in a dream so long ago that she might have forgotten– but Rowena never forgot, even when her memories had not happened yet.

"Helga," Rowena said in her cool, strange voice, and pulled loose from her dark hair a small bright blossom and tucked it behind the other girl's ear. Helga reached up and took it out, looked at the sunny yellow flower and smiled.

"Celandine," she murmured, replacing it, and dipped respectfully. "My lady."

"Please," she replied, "call me Rowena." She smiled then, mysterious and knowing, the barest curve of her lips. "I have been waiting for you for a very long time."

* * *

"Who taught you to control your power?" Rowena asked one day, and Helga's eyes went round and startled.

"Power, my lady?" There was a tremble in her voice. "Despite your kindness, I am but a peasant girl."

Rowena threw back her head and laughed, a sound Helga had never heard before. Few had. Rowena's laugh was bright and clear like a bell on a winter morning, like the icy cold babble of a stream in the mountains.

"A lesser witch might be deceived, Helga, but I know you have magic."

Helga's brow knit in worry, and she glanced around the gardens. They were alone.

"No one is supposed to know, Rowena. Mother said it could be dangerous, so I learnt to stop it from happening."

"Most gifts are dangerous, and you, my dear, are so very strong." Rowena reached out and ruffled Helga's hair, the friendly gesture strange from her cool, reserved hands. Her skin was so white. "You are meant to be more than a village girl."

"With all due respect, m'lady, I'm not." She knew that arguing with Rowena was more often than not a pointless exercise, but the words slipped past her lips nevertheless.

"You ought to study with my mother," Rowena said, as if the matter was already closed.

Helga sighed, plucked a blade of the long grass, and threaded it into her plaited hair.

* * *

One night, at almost fourteen years of age, Rowena woke from troubled dreams of a black-haired girl with sharp eyes at once too knowing and too foolish. It was late, but the faint light of false dawn was just barely visible in the East, lining the horizon in deepest blue.

Rowena dressed in the dark and left the house on silent, bare feet. The dewdrops chilled; the grass tickled. On the bench in the garden, Helga sat, fair hair gleaming slightly.

"May I join you?"

"Of course, Rowena." Helga had grown into her confidence along with her magic, and Rowena neither had nor desired any other friend save this peasant girl who soaked up everything the Lady Ravenclaw could teach. Only Helga touched, with warm and gentle fingers, the ice of Rowena's heart. The two young women sat in silence as the sun came up, turning Helga's hair to gold and washing Rowena's pale face with colour.

"You are not going to be happy with me," Rowena finally said. The sounds of morning birdsong; Helga turned to look at her friend, her lady.

"Why not?"

"We leave before the month is out. Father has business to which he must attend."

"So stay," Helga replied, "it's his business, not your own. Stay with me."

Rowena's ice eyes softened, the marble stillness of her face flashing briefly with sorrow. "There is much left for me to do, Helga," she murmured. The refusal was soft, as gentle as distant Rowena knew how to be, but still it bit into Helga's heart like an arrow.

"And what about me?"

"We will meet again." It was said with perfect confidence. "There is much left for us to do as well, my sweet Helga."

Helga looked away, into the burning sunrise. "Will you be going far?"

"Farther than you can imagine," Rowena answered, and Helga heard the sound of a breaking stem. Rowena departed silently as she had come, and Helga looked down, blinking the spots from her vision.

There was a pansy on her lap. Helga threw it to the earth.

No words passed between them when the time came for Rowena to depart, but her hair was crowned with tiny blue forget-me-nots, and for the first time in her life Rowena looked back as she rode away.

* * *

Helga was seventeen, and Godric had insisted she had to see come to the spring festival with him and Salazar. Helga and Salazar did not get along particularly well, and it came as no real surprise when he led Godric off to watch the duels. She did not mind; there was much to occupy her, and she knew that she was safe here. The day was warm and the breeze pleasant, and Helga wandered amongst the merchants who had come to sell their wares. She was covetously examining a very fine cauldron when she felt something tickle at her ear, and she reached up on instinct.

There was no one near her, but Helga's fingers wrapped around a spray of bluebells. Their smell was sweet.

"Rowena!" Helga called, but heard no reply.

She went to the flower-seller, but Rowena was not there. Helga tried to tell herself it was nothing, those bluebells, but she bought jonquils for her hair all the same and lost her taste for the party. The fields beyond were quiet, peaceful, and Helga wove the jonquils into a crown the way she had when she was but a child. They were yellow like her gown, yellow like celandine.

Helga smiled, bittersweet, and wound her chain of jonquils about her head. In spite of this, the air smelled of honeysuckle.

"I told you we would meet again," Rowena said, and Helga whirled. There she was, so much like Helga remembered her. Still beautiful, still cold. Still timeless-eyed, the Seer who lived all moments as one, old and young all at the same time. She had grown taller, though, and her skin a little darkened with sun. Helga threw her arms around the other woman with a cry, and they fell to the grass in the pale spring sun.

The honeysuckle tucked in Rowena's bodice fell loose and tangled in the end of Helga's hair. Neither noticed.

"I have missed you so," Helga whispered, eyes bright with unshed tears, but she was smiling. Helga, always smiling. Rowena, rootless Rowena, kissed her brow.

"I will always come back for you, my dear one."


End file.
